Kristina Fahl
Shuttlebee – MICRO Fall 2025
Published March 12, 2026
As part of our ‘Meet Our Founders’ series today, we introduce Kristina Fahl, CEO and Co-Founder of Shuttlebee based in Charlotte, NC. Shuttlebee helps get kids where they need to go—safely, in small groups.
Q: What problem are you trying to solve and what influenced you to start your company?
A: I ran a student transportation company and saw firsthand how insurance costs were pushing safe, qualified operators out of the market—not because of their risk profile, but because the industry couldn’t price them fairly. Meanwhile, families in growing communities had no reliable way to get their kids to school. The supply and demand both exist; they just can’t connect. Shuttlebee fixes that with the technology, training, and insurance infrastructure that makes small-operator student transportation viable and safe.
Q: What are you most excited about right now? What keeps you up at night?
A: What excites me most is watching the model click—operators building real businesses, families getting their mornings back, and routes filling faster than we expected. We’re proving that small operators can deliver big-fleet reliability when you give them the right tools. What keeps me up at night is the insurance puzzle. We’re building something that hasn’t existed before: coverage that actually reflects driver safety and uses real data to price risk fairly. Getting carriers to underwrite that vision—and getting it right—is the hardest and most important thing we’ll do.
Q: What does the road ahead look like for your company?
A: This year is about proving the model in our launch markets—filling routes, refining the operator experience, and demonstrating that our approach to safety and compliance actually reduces risk. Once we’ve shown that, we scale geographically. The bigger vision is becoming the insurance and technology backbone for small-operator student transportation nationwide. We’re not trying to own the vehicles or employ the drivers—we’re building the infrastructure that lets thousands of local operators run professional, compliant businesses. If we get this right, we’re not a transportation company. We’re the platform that makes an entire category possible.
Q: How will your NC IDEA grant funds advance your company?
A: The grant fuels our North Carolina growth—marketing to families, recruiting operators, and building the partnerships with schools and camps that make routes viable. Student transportation is a local, trust-based business; families need to hear about us from communities they’re already part of. NC IDEA funding lets us show up in those spaces, build awareness, and turn demand into enrolled routes.
Q: When did you know you wanted to take an entrepreneurial path?
A: I came to entrepreneurship through frustration. After running my own transportation company and scaling operations at Bus.com, I knew exactly where the system was broken—and I couldn’t unsee it. Good operators were being priced out of the market while families were desperate for reliable rides. The entrepreneurial path started the day I decided to stop working around the problem and start solving it.
Q: What have you enjoyed most about starting your own company?
A: The best part has been sharing this experience with my daughter. Early on, I started getting the word out by grabbing a table at local farmers markets, giving out coloring books that featured area businesses and letting her recruit “friends” to draw alongside her. Watching her pull strangers into our little setup while I talked to parents about school transportation—that’s entrepreneurship at its most honest. She doesn’t know she’s doing customer discovery. She just knows we’re building something together, and that’s meant more to me than any pitch competition.
Q: What is one thing you wish you understood about entrepreneurship before you ever got started?
A: Understudy first. Skip a few (thousand) mistakes.
Q: Who do you look to for advice and mentorship?
A: I’ve been lucky to build an advisory team that covers the gaps I can’t fill myself. Co-Founder Somil Jain brings 27 years of insurance expertise and has built telematics programs from scratch. Justin Whitaker knows commercial auto underwriting inside and out. Tiana Showe has deep connections in the insurtech and transportation space. Joe Emison is a serial entrepreneur and is an expert among experts in all things insurance/tech/infra and is willing to support my vibe-code habit. Heather Murphy who has been our school champion, advocate and partner. Dawn Walker as Sales Genius and mentor willing to talk about all of the challenging things. Aron Starosta who will hate being mentioned here. My supportive husband and Platform guy, John Fahl. And finally, there’s the advisor who convinced me to reboot a company I shut down: Emi Kubota for VC, business ownership and parenting advice. When I’m stuck on a product question, a compliance issue, or a go-to-market decision, I have people who’ve seen it before. The best advice I’ve gotten is to surround yourself with people who’ve already solved the problem you’re working on.
Q: What other passions do you have besides your business?
A: When there’s room for anything beyond family, friends and pets, I enjoy Beekeeping and building half-finished treehouses with my less-than-estatic daughter.
While visiting the Charlotte area, Kristina recommends:
- Singletree! The unsung hero of Waynesville.
Support Shuttlebee and Kristina by:
- If you’re a family struggling with school or camp transportation, check if we have a route in your area—or request one. If you’re an operator looking to build a real business, apply to join our network. If you run a school, camp, or PTA and want to solve transportation for your community, let’s talk. And if you just believe in what we’re building, spread the word. Introductions to families, operators, school administrators, and investors all help. This is a network-effect business—every connection makes the whole thing stronger.
